Online Documents

Online Documents

1. Introduction

   • Online documents (such as text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics and forms) are any documents that are held on a computer but can be accessed, edited and shared from anywhere.
   • Services which allow this include Live Documents, Microsoft ® Offi ce ® Live and Google™ Docs.

2. Compressing Files

   • Working with online documents means that local files frequently need to be uploaded for sharing, or downloaded to be used for local processing. Files may be extremely large, which can cause problems with transmission (delivery) in terms of speed and network usage.
   • To reduce this problem, files have to be compressed (i.e. reduced in size) before transmission and then expanded after transmission. A common method of doing this is to convert them to zip fi les (.zip format).
   • Zip fi les are basically stores of data fi les which may have been compressed. There are many different algorithms for doing the compression – with most compression software supporting several of these. The last item in a zip fi le is an index, which shows the placement of each of the data fi les and allows other files to be added.
   • Quite often the zip fi le will also contain some program code (a sequence of instructions) to allow the fi les within the zip fi le to be unzipped (known as self-extracting fi les). There is a wide range of software available for zipping fi les, with one of the most popular being WinZip.

3. Online Software Advantages

   • The biggest advantage of using online document software is that you can allow many people to share a version of a document and work on it at the same time as other people (known as collaborative working).
   • You can also access content: • anywhere there is an available internet connection • via different devices (e.g. PC, smartphone, tablet) • on different operating devices (e.g. Windows ® and Mac).
   • Online documents can also have automatic backup. Backing up fi les means that you save a copy of the fi le at a known point in time. This means that you can always go back to that version if you lose or corrupt the present version.
   • Some software programs will automatically make a copy of the file you have open and are working on at set time intervals. In Microsoft ® Word ® you can set how often you would like the file to automatically backup (every 30 minutes,etc). Automatic backup of online documents is just an extension of this concept.

4. Controls Over Online Documents

   • Version Control
     • Version control is important when users are sharing documents online, as all users need to be working from the most up-to-date version of the same document. One of the simplest ways of implementing version control is to allow just one user to open a document, or part of the document, for update at any one time. When one user has the document open and someone else tries to access it, the document will be locked . It is only unlocked when the original user has completed updating the fi le and has closed it again.
     • Other methods of version control include the software allocating the latest version number showing the time and identity of the person making the changes. If, for any reason, a document does become corrupt (damaged) or is missing important updates, it is possible to roll back to a commonly agreed version number.